


people write songs about girls like you

by thewhitebirds



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Death Eaters, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Hogwarts, MWPP Era, Marauders' Era, Obsession, POV First Person, POV First Person Plural, Sisters, The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, The Virgin Suicides-inspired, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-10 22:12:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7863088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewhitebirds/pseuds/thewhitebirds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In our dreams, we see the sisters as they were -- forever ours, forever young, forever laughing at us, forever understanding something about the world that we never will."</p><p>--</p><p>Some reflections on the Black sisters, from the boys who loved them but didn't know them. Inspired by the narrative style of <i>The Virgin Suicides</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	people write songs about girls like you

_“We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy… we knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.”_

On the day when Bellatrix Black -- by then, Lestrange -- was sentenced to life in Azkaban, we all mourned. The papers were almost tired of trial reporting by then, but a Black sister was reason enough for a headline. None of us were there, so we poured over the coverage instead until the pages of the _Prophet_ were like tissue, our fingers ink-stained. When it described her laugh, we felt it acutely in our bones.

The first time we heard that laugh was in childhood. It was the sixties -- the Wizarding world was peaceful and our parents were preoccupied with buying summer homes and breeding krups. There was so much money. We would have heard the laugh when we first saw the Black sisters, at one of those parties where children were left to their own devices in country house gardens. Even today, none of us remember talking with them. Lavinia Greengrass, who eventually became quite good friends with Narcissa Black, maintained that the sisters were standoffish even as small children. "They only needed each other, I suppose."

And yet, we needed them. We didn't even know what _need_ meant until we saw them, pale as marble, legs coltish and skinny, holding hands. Our memories of those early days are hazy now, but Narcissa's yellow ringlets, Bellatrix's red lips, Andromeda's bright eyes still appear when we least expect it. At one of those parties, Rabastan Lestrange told us that he was in love. Rabastan was only six then and has no memory of this. Considering that one of them married his brother, one married his friend, and one married a nobody, it's for the best.

*

With Bellatrix, the recent books put some of the blame for what happened on Cygnus Black, but he was really just like any of our fathers. He had salt-and-pepper hair and was a former duelling champion (we never questioned in those days how _everyone's_ father could have possibly been a duelling champion). It was true that Bellatrix could duel early and was cruel, but we wanted her to look at us with her contemptuous eyes. When she pinched Sebastian Travers, we gathered around and watched the bruise bloom on his arm. We pinched ourselves too, to try to feel the same way, to make sure we were alive.

Groups of us shared tutors, but the Black sisters had their own. Our mothers were snide and jealous about it, but it only added to the mystery. Eugene Avery, whose father was the Blacks' solicitor, claimed he saw their bedrooms once, which was impossible for any of us to confirm or deny, though Lucius Malfoy laughed scornfully. Avery said Narcissa had cherry blossom pink silk covering the walls, and Andromeda's room was full of books. He claimed he put his head on her pillow and smelled toothpaste and violets.

*

There were years when they weren't together at Hogwarts, but we mostly remember when they were -- three heads whispering to each other in the corridor, three voices, three laughs. Severus Snape admitted that he still associates that corner of the Slytherin common room with them, though maybe hundreds of others have passed through by now. Bellatrix carved her initials into the corner of the mantle. People still trace it, running a nail through the _B_ s. Hogwarts was where we watched Narcissa grow into herself and Andromeda grow out of herself. For Bellatrix, it was just biding time.

We interviewed Professor Slughorn. His glasses are rose-tinted and he only ever remembers them as girls at his parties -- Bellatrix drinking gin from a flask, Narcissa at the center of a circle of admirers, Andromeda in a heated debate. "It didn't matter what I was hosting -- it was as if those girls were the sun and we only existed to orbit around them."

*

After Andromeda, they asked us about warning signs -- could we have seen it? Could we have stopped it? Our parents worried about our sisters and cousins, our girlfriends, our future wives.

What were the signs? Andromeda took muggle studies (but as a joke, she said), she let her nail polish wear to chipped bits of glitter, she became interested in watching Quidditch, she spent a lot of time alone writing letters. When Bellatrix talked, she sometimes chewed her bottom lip and twirled strands of hair around her wand. She stopped saying _mudblood_.

Maybe all of it was a sign. Maybe none of it was a sign.

Then she started dating Adrian Selwyn. We thought at first her mother had put her up to it -- Druella Black, cold and exacting, would have cared very deeply about the Selwyn racing broom fortune and about the fact that her second daughter never seemed to go on dates with anyone at all.

The months passed. We wondered -- and asked -- if sleeping with Andromeda Black was a transformative experience, like a hit of acid. _No,_  Adrian had admitted, when he was very drunk. It only happened once. He told us she had stayed awake all night afterwards, smoking and staring at the window on the far side of the room. At one point, he thought her eyes were glassy with tears.

"I could have borne it," he said, firewhiskey slopping over the side of the glass, "If she didn't really like me, but to know, that all along, I was just there to be a cover for _him_ \--"

We have all, at one point or another, thought about what it will be like when the end catches up with Ted Tonks. We fixate on it: the room will be bright green, and the light will leave his eyes.

*

It was clear in the months that followed that the end of Andromeda built armor around Narcissa -- everything about her was harder and sharper. Bellatrix, out of school, was fully absorbed by the Dark Lord (less importantly, she was also married). But Narcissa emerged from the ashes with hard eyes, mouth beautifully scornful. No one mentioned Andromeda to her then or ever, out of fear. Bellatrix may have been the dueller, but Narcissa knew at least one terrible secret about each of us.

We were so busy watching her that we almost didn't notice when Lucius Malfoy entered. For someone who bragged about everything, Malfoy was annoyingly, smugly silent about Narcissa -- he wouldn't tell us if her hair smelled clean and bright like winter, if her lips tasted like strawberries. After all, he'd been let in on the world's biggest secret. We watched her, and we watched him watch her with an expression that made us feel very lonely.

We were losing Narcissa. There were plenty of reasons to hate Malfoy, but this we didn't begrudge him much. For us, it had always been the three of them, but he only ever saw her.

*

Books will be written about what we did and why we did it. Maybe it's true that we were all suffering from egotism and narcissistic personality disorder, the generation of boys swept up in the frenzy surrounding the Dark Lord. But the authors weren't there, and we were. Perhaps it was just boredom and loneliness. We wanted to do something. We wanted to feel alive; we wanted to burn brightly, just for a moment, the way Bellatrix burned every day.

But when we were tested, we caved to our own wives and mothers and sisters, we stayed in our homes, fled, overwhelmed with cowardice. We watched it unfold with our hands over our eyes. Only Bellatrix remained.

We read the transcript in _The Daily Prophet_.

Perhaps, when the Dark Lord returns, she will be rewarded beyond all of us. She alone was faithful. We whisper this to ourselves and glance at the paper out of the corner of our eye. In the pictures, the Dementors surround her and extinguish her spark.

*

In our dreams, we see the sisters as they were -- forever ours, forever young, forever laughing at us, forever understanding something about the world that we never will. In our dreams, their white arms are linked and their lives impossibly tangled.

As the years pass, the memories we have fade, as do the possessions we've clung to -- Narcissa's velvet hair ribbon, Bellatrix's ivory-backed mirror, Andromeda's chess pieces. We let our minds drift from their extraordinary existence to our mundane daily lives. It didn't matter in the end who or what they chose, only that we had loved them and they hadn't cared, still don't care, and we will spend the bleak stretch of days ahead clinging to the pieces that remain.


End file.
